Digital and wireless transmission of real time data in radiotherapy dosimetry

Our expectation with this study was that we would develop a wireless and digital system to send the data out side of the treatment room to reduce the measurement errors caused by triaxial cable in radiotherapy dosimetry. With the system we developed, our purpose is to avoid the disadvantages of the triaxial cable used in radiotherapy dosimetry such as signal losses due to long distance data carriage, being affected by environmental conditions, frequent calibration requirements, damages due to using conditions, high cost, and is to gain advantages of easy setup and nearly zero losses with the help of digital data transmission.The working principle of the system is to connect ion chamber to electrometer without using extension cable by getting the data output digitally from electrometer and carry it wirelessly to outside of the room without any losses and control (send commands to) electrometer with same digital wireless line. TCP/IP/802.11 protocol is used to carry digital data. This ensures the data provision much faster to longer distances than RS232 protocol safely. The computer outside of the room can send commands to electrometer and get data from it with this system. Besides its extraordinary setup easiness, data is directly recorded on the computer and the data loss is avoided. As it is not affected from environmental conditions, calibration is not required at all. This system is cheaper than triaxial cable. There are checksum in each digital data packet sent and this feature makes it impossible to send a wrong data due to cable depreciation or damage.